


the gr8est of games

by skeletalLanterns



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 19:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeletalLanterns/pseuds/skeletalLanterns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Portrait of the Legislatorator as a Young Terrorainee, and the games she plays to pass the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the gr8est of games

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bootcred](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bootcred/gifts).



> Written for Ladystuck 2013.
> 
> The prompt was as follows: _Aranea's personality reflects Mindfang, and Meenah, the Condesce. Following that pattern, what would that make of Redglare? Latula doesn't seem to be cut out to be that cutthroat of a legislacerator, does she? I'd like to see something exploring the relationship between Redglare and Mindfang, hopefully in a setting that resembles their canon relationship - a hunter and the hunted - while tackling Redglare's personality from a different angle than the usually done stoic, hard-as-nails neophyte._
> 
> This focusses mainly on Redglare, and I hope it's enjoyable.

The sea is a prosperous place. The port-town that she’s lived in for a perigee or so now is no exception. Along the coast, semi-submerged, are luxurious hives, hoarded for sweeps and sweeps and inhabited by trolls who probably have never seen anyone lower than olive. The view out towards the vast ocean is breathtaking. The view facing in towards the mainland, less so.

Behind the coral-like formations of the highbloods’ hives sprawls the Squalor, a grimy, murky slum, dilapidated and beaten down, not like those who live there. Hidden from the gaze of the rich dwell the trolls who attempt to make their living on the surface of the sea, rather than beneath it - gamblignants, petty thieves and general ne’er-do-wells. For the sea draws in the prosperous, and with them the people who wish to prosper from them. It’s a curious relationship, if a terribly imbalanced one. Most who try to swindle the purple are destroyed or dismembered by ferocious lusii. Or the many bodyguards stationed all over the town. Or they somehow manage to impale themselves on the ornamental anemonsters in the quasi-aquatic gardens.

The streets of the Squalor are almost a law unto themselves. Almost, of course; for the long claw of the law reaches into every cranny and drags the lawless into the open, kicking and screaming. In theory. There’s a Minor Legislatorium in the town, as is usual when there are large concentrations of highbloods in any location. The threat of a sudden show-trial keeps a lot of the lowbloods in their place. But most of the terrorainees at this particular Legislatorium are too nervous, too sensible, or just not committed enough to venture too deep into the Squalor. So taking a stroll through what is unequivocally a bad neighbourhood, just as the light is beginning to turn, and not even bothering to hide the fact you are an agent of the law is, without a doubt, a terrible idea. It could also be considered to be gambling with your life, if you were the sort to trust in luck.

But she has no time for luck. Games of chance are rarely purely so, for there is always an element of skill in the playing. It may take many years of study, of practice, of investigation, but usually things will fall into place and the facade of “chance” is brushed away. She doesn’t discount its existence, just holds the belief that luck is not the breaker or maker of fate. It’s all a matter of knowing the situation. No situation is so bad that some little thing cannot be turned to an advantage. Be prepared for every eventuality. Know the rules of the game.

She walks, head held high, arms clasped behind her back. Her robes are gaudy against the murk of the alleyway, the teal and red a beacon of her righteousness, her dauntlessness at even setting foot in the Squalor. She knows they know her, of course. They fear her, and rightly too. It’s not the sword at her side, or the robes she wears that mark her as a terrorainee. It’s not even the terrifying dragon lusus, circling the sky above.

They fear her because she smiles.

Any troll who didn’t know who Redglare was would be confused at the reaction of those watching her pick her way down the alley. She is a slight troll, lacking particularly fearsome horns, and not especially sharp of fang. She has an aura of friendliness and her smile is gentle. But it is the smile that is so disconcerting, as it rarely falls, even when her hand moves to her sword or the dragon opens its jaws.

She continues down the alleys, paying no heed to the eyes watching her from the hives, until she reaches a cast iron troll-hole in the middle of the thoroughfare. The cruel sun is almost over the horizon, the sea already turning bitter with its glow. How convenient that she’s reached here in time. She wrenches the heavy troll-hole up like it were made of paper, and with surprising elegance begins to climb down the ladder attached to the side of the tunnel below. She can hear the echos as her boots clack on the rungs and, if she strains, the sound of water.

Redglare has come here because she likes to play games. She has several she likes: she’s good at card games like Alternia Hold’Em and snap-your-opponent’s-bones, she can do a passable impression of Gl'bgolyb when playing Charredes (without the side effect of the other players dropping dead, of course) and makes an excellent goalie in matches of limbsphere. Many of her fellow terrorainees at the Legislatorium don’t think she takes her studies seriously, incursions into the Squalor not withstanding. They couldn’t be more wrong, of course. She may like her diversions well enough, but her favourite games are of a different kind. The sort of games a purrbeast plays with a squeakbeast. The sort of games where the victim doesn’t realise they are playing, not until it’s too late.

The ladder deposits her in the middle of an underground cavern, open on one side to the vast ocean, though the overhang shelters the cavern from the worst of the approaching sun. The tide reaches in here, like a tentative hand out of a recuperacoon, and the air is heavy with spray. A ship is moored to the left of the cavern, creaking and complaining as the waves brush against the shore. It flies a flag depicting a skull and two crossed bones. It is positively illegal. 

Early on in her time at the Legislatorium, Redglare had realised there was illegal trading going on amongst the trolls living in the shadow of the more prosperous side of town. It would be simple to stop the gamblignants, she had thought, and in turn she’d receive praise and recognition from the higher-ups at the Legislatorium. Maybe she’d even get the title of Neophyte sooner than the rest of the current clutch of terrorainees. But while the majority of the gamblignants had turned out to be dull and not really worth her time, their leader had proved to be a worthy challenge. Much worthier than she’d been expecting, really.

The troll who could either be considered the other player or the prey stands on the deck of the pir8ship. She is a caste above Redglare’s own teal, which makes her only a little older, and she is the most beautiful troll Redglare has ever touched. If her own smile could be considered gentle yet threatening, Mindfang’s can only be said to be filled with a kind of savage glee. She is a spider with knives attached to every leg. She is the perfect adversary.

They’d felt hatred towards each other at first glance, of course. Redglare had been making one of her customary jaunts through the Squalor, eyes peeled for any wrongdoing, when her attention was caught by a kerfuffle moving rapidly towards her. Mindfang had been running full pelt through the alleyways, gold dripping off her like blood from an overclocked helmsman. As she’d passed, she’d draped a gold chain around Redglare’s throat, like a spangly noose, and tugged hard. Redglare’s knees hit the ground, and the strange troll had turned around, waved, and had continued running. Gold wasn’t Redglare’s colour, really, she preferred the cold tang of iron, but the chain remained coiled in her quarters back at the Legislatorium. The just thing to do would have to returned it to its rightful owner, but every time she thought of doing so, she always had some excuse not too. It’d be useful to bargain with, she thought. If I keep it, she might think I care about her. And so it stayed, tucked inside the biography of some great Legislatorator, hidden but not forgotten.

When she’d managed to track her down, to the curious little cavern beneath the surface, she hadn’t pressed her advantage right away. She had monitored the troll-hole for around a week before she even attempted to descend, keeping watch from an abandoned hive within eyesight of the street below. The troll’s name was Mindfang - she’d wrenched the name from the bloodied lips of one of her crewtrolls. (They were all so young, the crewtrolls, and Mindfang too, but youth was no protector when it came to the law. Redglare should know. She was young, as well.) Most of the times she had concealed her treasure beneath her coat, but every so often some of it would glint in the first rays of the sun. It never occurred to Redglare that this might have been intentional, that Mindfang was showing her hand subtly, as proof (as if it were needed) of her continued misdeeds, to perhaps encourage the pursuit of justice. Redglare was confident that it was only her playing the game. But when she finally climbed down the ladder in the middle of the street, Mindfang was waiting.

They’d sat, and they’d talked, and they’d played knucklebones Redglare had brought with her (made from the bones of the dead crewman who’d gifted Redglare with Mindfang’s name. She told Mindfang this, and she’d laughed.) The atmosphere was always charged at these meetings. Their relationship was delightfully blackened, but Redglare could never quite forget she was playing the long game here. They would court each other with threats - once Mindfang had had poison slipped into Redglare’s recuperacoon, which had been discovered with fatal consequences by the poor soul on mucking-out duty. Redglare would send Threshecutioners to purge the street above Mindfang’s hideout. They’d play little games together, always in danger of losing an eye or a few fingers. But they never went that far. They were only games, after all. And when they stopped playing the sort of games you could play in polite company, they would retreat into Mindfang’s cabin aboard the rickety old ship, the crewtrolls dismissed to perform various less-than-legal deeds. There Redglare and Mindfang played different kinds of games, games still involving fingers and quick tongues, still the games that could get you seriously hurt.

Back in her own mind, in the underground cavern, Redglare advances towards the pirate ship, she can’t help but be aware that Pyralspite could do little to help her, in this underground cavern. If she were to come to harm, it would be solely her wits that would save her. But, she thinks, as her arms slide around Mindfang’s waist, she isn’t in any danger at the moment. She’s laid her trap carefully. Let the pir8 think she may have succeeded in seducing an agent of the law over to her side with her cunning and multitudinous words. Then she’ll begin the chase. And then the fun will begin.

_Some of this comes back to her, many sweeps later, in the period between her neck snapping and her soul leaving her body. The game had been the greatest she’d ever played. The losses had been substantial - she recalls the lurid scarring beneath the eyepatch, the face she’d kissed marred not just by a grim expression. And, of course, her own life. That was a pretty great loss, she supposed. And even as she hangs from the courtroom, as one of His Honorable Tyranny’s claws loops gently around one ankle, she realises there were no winners to this game, not really._


End file.
